Word: stableboy
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Luther ("Bill," "Bojangles") Robinson, 71, longtime master of old-school (non-acrobatic) tap dancers; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan. Grandson of a slave, Robinson ran away from his home-town Richmond at eight, shined shoes, worked as stableboy and waiter, danced for nickels & dimes in beer joints before he rose to millionaire stardom (as high as $8,000 a week) in vaudeville, movies (The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel with Moppet Shirley Temple) and musicomedies (The Hot Mikado). A natural dancer who never took a lesson, he gave lessons to Eleanor Powell and Ruby Keeler, originated the widely...
...into musty corners, looking for his sword; bored spear carriers fumbled through a prop basket full of hunting horns. Behind the backdrop a ragged army of stagehands lounged on the rocks of the Rhine (out of use for the moment), gulping coffee from paper cartons and jeering at a stableboy who was trying to direct a sorrel horse on stage...
...escaped from the Germans. In 1914, aged 35, he was wounded in a French bayonet attack near Charleroi and left for dead on the field. Captured by the Germans, he made his first escape via Holland to England, aided by his fluent German, variously disguised as a butcher, stableboy, coal man, and magician in a traveling circus. At one point he was helped by Nurse Edith Cavell. In 1915 he was back with the French Fifth Army...